appearance joining us on the devicive vote on don't ask, don't tell and the secret, powerful role in each of the campaigns we've seen so far in the primaries. the show starts right now. today, our weeklong job wars continues. to allow for all sorts of abuses from outsources robots, china trade, bank gambling. they make money by destroying the other half of the country. think of it like a snake eati i itself. all this culminating on thursday when we broadcast live from one of the largest job fares to date, this one from dallas. people come from all ends of the unemployment spectrum, college grads fighting for an in. a tough task when so many company rs laying off for profit, outsources or facing a government so overwhelming and vague they don't know what to do with their own capital. you put it together and you get, folks, countless folks without jobs and an ablty to find a plan. there are those a part of the workforce for 20 or 30 years, who have found themselves laid auch. clo meanwhi meanwhile, in washington, the political fight wages on. none addressing the major six industries that contr

clouds. rob marciano introduces us to these combat weatherman. >>> and the a.m. fix block is up and running as it is every day. join the live conversation, go to cnn.com/amfix. >>> it has been one bruising night on the island of bermuda. igor roared right past the coast overnight, missing direct landfall by just 40 miles. >> it's a large hurricane generating enormous waves. it's pummelling the island with powerful winds, driving rain, trees there are shredded, power lines are down. cnn is your hurricane headquarters, rob marciano is here in new york. first, though, let's go to the scene, reynolds wolf live in elbow beach, bermuda. looks like not a good time there this morning. >> reporter: well, things are improving compared to last night where the brunt of the storm really came just to our west around 11:00 local time through midnight, really the worst of it. this storm, although it did not make a direct hit, you've got to remember that bermuda is a small area. and this storm when you include the outflow is nearly 1,000 miles wide. when you think about bermuda, it's not one island,

one more day left of summer. so use it wisely. >> yeah. >> i'm john roberts. >> yeah, more the official start of the fall, although it feels like in much of the country like summer. i'm kiran chetry. we'll have much more on christine o'donnell in a few minutes. >>> nato saying that a chopper went down in southern afghanistan this morning killing nine soldiers. the number of dead in 2010 now to at least 529. the most since the war began nine years ago. >>> the great recession is history. that's the official word from a panel of economists who say it ended more than a year ago. well, you didn't feel it, did you? if it's over, why are so many americans feeling so much pain? we're going to talk with economist jeff saks about that this morning. >>> and the debate continues in the senate on whether to dump the don't ask, don't tell policy. in the meantime, lady gaga is waging her own war against the the military policy banning openly gay service members. she brought her star power to a rally in maine urging lawmakers to repeal it. >> what did she say? that freedom is prime rib of ame

illegal drug use. its highest level in nearly a decade. ecstasy, meth, and marijuana are fueling the surge. jean meserve is looking at why pot may not be such a big deal. >>> go to cnn.com/amfix. >> up first, we want to get to the weather. thousands scrambling for a way to work in the dark after a powerful storm tore through new york city. >> national weather service still hasn't confirmed if it was a tornado that touched down. but they're going to find out today for sure. a lot of residents say we don't need any confirmation. we know what we saw. >> reporter: it seemed to hit out of nowhere. >> you can see the rain coming down in sheets now. >> reporter: a fast-moving, ferocious storm exploded over new york city and the surrounding area just as people were headed home in the afternoon rush. commuters became storm chasers. and in a matter of minutes, sheets of rain, dark black clouds, 80-mile-an-hour winds. powerful enough to rip the brick off of store fronts. and for block after block, from brooklyn to queens, trees came down crushing cars, blocking roads, ripping down power lines.

suzanne malveaux traveling with the president this morning. she'll join us live with the latest on his departure. >>> seven former members of the u.s. air force claiming aliens in ufos have visited earth to deliver a warning. and they want the government to come clean. could it be that we have been visited by e.t.? >> hope so. >>> meantime, the a.m. fix blog is up and running. go to cnn.com/amfix. >>> we begin with a developing story out of iraq. an american service member now in custody suspected of fatally shooting two u.s. soldiers and wounding a third. >> military officials say they died in a "noncombat incident" in fallujah. barbara starr is live at the pentagon. this is a very, very tragic story. what are your sources telling you about what may have happened? >> well, john and kiran, this is the most terrible news for two military families, of course. the military announcing it does have a soldier in custody regarding this case. the man in custody is identified by the military as specialist neftali platero. suspected in shooting deaths of two soldiers. the two men died in this in

this morning. join the live conversation right now, go to cnn.com/amfix. >> let us know whether you'd eat that salmon. we've been talking about it in the newsroom. >> you could eat more of it for the same price. would you want to? >>> we begin with the big buzz in washington over a new book by bob woodward, it's called "obama's wars" and paints a picture of a president who was anxious to get out of afghanistan. >> ed henry joins us live from the big house on pennsylvania avenue this morning with the developing story. ed, if the story is accurate and bob woodward is known to be accurate, this president has had a touchy relationship with his top military people. >> you're right. we don't have a copy of the book yet, but it has a track record, published a couple dozen books, most of them considered pretty darn accurate. this is going to be a difficult story for this white house to handle. if you go through the details of this. broad brush we've known that there's division, there has been division, there's division in every administration over war, policy, et cetera. the extent, the detai

coverage. ed henry live at the white house this morning. he'll tell us how the administration is about to go with a prominent republican. let's begin with brianna keilar live in washington. congress is back in session for the big midterm election push and they've got a very big issue on their hands in the matter of whether or not to extend these bush tax cuts. this is -- this is going to be an interesting one to watch in the next couple of days. >> and this is the big issue, jim. this is the issue that in really less than four weeks because they're out of there again. they're out of washington again ahead of the election season, this is what they're going to be dealing with. and obviously, the issue that continues to resinate is republican leader john boehner who had said that he would go along with extending the tax cuts for everyone except for the wealthiest earns, which, of course, is what president obama has gone for. but it's created a jumbled message among republicans. because look at what some other republicans are saying. you have mitch mcconnell who is saying, no, i'm pushing

marciano here with us in atlanta in the extreme weather center. it's just a messy one. >> it is, welcome, john. not only do we have all of that happening but right now two tornado warnings out for parts of virginia and north carolina. let's go to the magic wall. kyra tuck county, northeastern parts of north carolina, and matthews county, the pink polygons that you see here these are tornadoes. and both of these cells are moving north at 40 miles an hour. so moving very, very quickly. this saul within a tornado watch that empasses a big swath of real estate across the mid-atlantic until 1:00 this afternoon. so this is -- you know, we have remnants of a tropical system which was only around for a little bit. and we got a tremendous amount of rain. flooding a huge issue. boy, i'll tell you some of the areas that we've already seen flooding in, like wilmington, 7 inches of rainfall. that's just in 24 hours. and that doesn't include, john, the 10 inches that they had two days earlier. they could very well end up with 20 inches of rainfall without a hurricane there. >> how long is thi

beginning. >> our rob marciano is in our extreme weather center tracking all of this for us this morning. so are they still in a situation where the waters are still rising now? >> no, the river at least at portage did crest last night. but it's going to remain above flood stage for quite some time. not only across wisconsin, but southern and central parts of minnesota. we've got all these rivers that are actually draining into the mississippi. and we're going to see some issues, i think, downstream from there, as well. so that's issue number one. issue number two is -- more immediate concerns, what's going on in portage. here's where the river crested. the record is is 20.5 feet. it crested just above that last night. and now it's at about 20.2 feet. we're at near record strange. major flood stage, but not expected to come back down below flood stage really until late wednesday into thursday. so we've got quite some time before this river really gets below the danger zone. and what i mean by danger zone is, well, usually after a river crests, we can relax, but because of this si